[Scotty_ Dog]

Hello, I am new to this forum, I am 18 and have voted for the first time this year and went for Liberal Democrats. Today I came across a leaflet from a local group who are against the BNP. I was appauled by the statements the BNP have made, featured in this leaflet. The most disgusting "Rape is simply sex... Women enjoy sex, so it cannot be such a terrible ordeal". I was horrified reading this and wondered how on earth anyone could support a party justifying rape. Can anyone help me understand such insanity??

[Nets]

My guess is that the quote was taken out of context from some party member and likely doesn't reflect the party's position.

Anyways, people vote for the BNP for the same reason they vote for rightist parties all over Europe; resentment of immigration.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

Well, it was one person, but he was quite high up in the party - until this was publicised (he'd written in in his blog, over 2 years earlier):

Sacked: The BNP candidate who said 'some women are like gongs — they need to be struck regularly'

A senior BNP official has been sacked as a London Assembly election candidate after he described rape as a 'myth' and said 'some women are like gongs ? they need to be struck regularly'.

The BNP said Nick Eriksen would be removed from its list of candidates, where he had been placed second, giving him a serious chance of winning a seat on May 1.

Richard Barnbrook, the party's London leader, said Mr Eriksen's views were 'totally and absolutely abhorrent' and he would be disciplined.

But, amid clear signs of disarray in the BNP, it was not clear whether Mr Eriksen had been sacked as the party's chief London organiser, and other senior figures rallied round him.

BNP deputy leader Simon Darby claimed the accusations were a 'smear' and that Mr Eriksen's remarks had been taken 'completely out of context'.

Mr Eriksen is the author of Sir John Bull, a far-Right blog which has regularly advocated hatred and abuse against women.

On August 24, 2005, Mr Eriksen wrote on the blog: 'I've never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime...

'Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal.

'To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence.

'A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched.'

On November 5 2005, in an item entitled 'Give her a slap!', Mr Eriksen approvingly quoted Noel Coward as saying: 'Some women are like gongs ? they need to be struck regularly.?

On November 24, 2005, Mr Eriksen wrote that mothers 'should never go out to work' and described career women as 'unnatural and vile'.

Mr Eriksen said the comments were simply 'in order to stimulate debate'.

Yesterday afternoon, London Elects, which is running the May 1 polls, said Mr Barnbrook had approached it about withdrawing Mr Eriksen's name but had not yet submitted the forms to do so.

Interesting that the London leader said the views were "totally and absolutely abhorrent"; while the national deputy leader said it was just "out of context" and a smear. So I guess he thought the leader of the BNP in London was one of those who was doing the smearing. And that the comments weren't too bad.

[Dan]

Can anyone help me understand such insanity??

It's simple, the BNP are the only place for a large number of people to go.

Modern political correctness has created a situation where you can not rationally discuss certain topics.

If you question the (very questionable) policy of mass immigration without assimilation and live in Britain, you have nowhere to go but the BNP. If you desire to preserve the British culture and keep the British nation British, you have nowhere to go but the BNP. If you question the idiocy of the EU, again, you have little choice but the BNP. If you question the insanity of completely ignoring the biological differences between the sexes, again you have nowhere to go but the BNP. If you think that giving in to every theocratic demand of Islamic immigrants is not a good policy, the BNP is all you have. If you believe in free speech on sensitive topics such as those mentioned above, again, the BNP is all you can support.

In Britain, the seemingly elite and aristocratic nature of the Tories (Potemkin talks on this a lot), the only possible non-extreme alternative on these issues, alienates a lot of the working and middle-class, and this makes the BNP the only real choice for some.

Because the three mainstream parties have completely swallowed the multi-cultural Kool-Aid, and anybody who tries to talk about these very real, pressing issues is marginalized, the BNP is the only alternative for a lot of people. The political system pretty much forces them to the extremist party, because there is no other choice.

Take a look at this test that was posted here a couple days back:


If you're working-class, Euro-skeptical, and not left-wing, you have few choices: support the aristocratic elite Tories, UKIP (another minor party derided as extremists), or the BNP.

[Andres]

Anyways, people vote for the BNP for the same reason they vote for rightist parties all over Europe; resentment of immigration.

At least in Germany, the places with the highest amount of votes for the far-right have minute amounts of immigrants, e.g. the parts of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg with destroyed economies.

If you question the (very questionable) policy of mass immigration without assimilation and live in Britain, you have nowhere to go but the BNP. If you desire to preserve the British culture and keep the British nation British, you have nowhere to go but the BNP. If you question the idiocy of the EU, again, you have little choice but the BNP. If you question the insanity of completely ignoring the biological differences between the sexes, again you have nowhere to go but the BNP. If you think that giving in to every theocratic demand of Islamic immigrants is not a good policy, the BNP is all you have. If you believe in free speech on sensitive topics such as those mentioned above, again, the BNP is all you can support.

This is basically a strawman argument mixed with a false dichotomy.

The political system pretty much forces them to the extremist party, because there is no other choice.

In a multi-party system like Britain's, the political system forces no one to support the extremist party. If most BNP supporters were just looking for an alternative which did not involve the extremism of the BNP they could have formed their own party.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

That's complete rubbish, Dan. I don't know who drew that diagram, but it doesn't prove much. The BNP aren't defined just by being anti-EU and their economic policy; they are also severely racist, and have the court convictions to prove it.

UKIP and the Tories are significantly anti-immigration; but they manage it without being racist. There are plenty of places for anti-immigration voters to go without resorting to supporting racists. UKIP is nowhere near as extreme as the BNP. If you're left wing and anti-EU, there's the Socialist Labour party, which wants to leave the EU; or there was the No2EU movement, who stood in the European elections (what their plans are for the future, I'm not sure).

The only thing that makes the BNP stand out is its racism. And that is its reason for existence. They don't talk about their anti-semitic views these days, but there's no real reason to believe they've given them up either.

[Nets]

At least in Germany, the places with the highest amount of votes for the far-right have minute amounts of immigrants, e.g. the parts of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg with destroyed economies.

That's a good point, Andres. From everything I've read of the far-right (verging on neo-nazi) parties in Germany pretty much only have support in the FGDR, which your right, immigrants aren't going to.

[Dan]

In a multi-party system like Britain's, the political system forces no one to support the extremist party. If most BNP supporters were just looking for an alternative which did not involve the extremism of the BNP they could have formed their own party.

But Britain is a FPP system, which makes creating a new party that actually has a chance at a seat, extremely difficult. It may be multi-party, but that doesn't mean it is open to new parties.

UKIP and the Tories are significantly anti-immigration; but they manage it without being racist.

From what I understand the charge of racism has been levelled against UKIP, even by the Tories.

Also, I mentioned that, as far as I know, the Tories were often not acceptable to the working class due to the elite/aristocratic nature of the Tories (something Potemkin has talked on a couple of times).

[Andres]

But Britain is a FPP system, which makes creating a new party that actually has a chance at a seat, extremely difficult. It may be multi-party, but that doesn't mean it is open to new parties.

You are failing to consider your first post. If the base that joined the BNP did not share its racist platform, then they could have formed their party and still have almost a good a chance as if they had joined the BNP, or they could have taken control of the BNP and redirect its policy beyond just dropping antisemitism.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

As I said, Dan, the BNP have the criminal convictions to prove their racism. Look at this profile of Griffin:

Profile: Nick Griffin
The BNP leader has won an unprecedented electoral victory by masking his extremism with sharp suits and an amiable front

Nick Griffin’s wit may have helped him to become the most successful far-right leader Britain has ever produced. Among his drinking chums, the chairman of the British National party is apt to perform a hilarious party piece: he removes his glass eye and lays it on the table. It is curious behaviour that draws attention to a mysterious chapter in his shadowy past.

Last weekend the BNP secured its biggest mainstream victory when Griffin became its second member to be elected to the European parliament, as MEP for the North West region. Hours earlier, Andrew Brons, another candidate, won a seat in Yorkshire and Humber.

Griffin, convicted of inciting racial hatred in 1998, has called Britain “a multiracial hell-hole”, British Muslims “the most appalling, insufferable people to have to live with”, overt homosexuality “repulsive” and the Holocaust “the hoax of the 20th century”. Last week a pelting of eggs sent him scrambling for cover at his victory press conference.

By Griffin’s account, he lost his left eye in an accident when a discarded bullet exploded in a pile of wood he was burning at his home in 1990. Others have speculated that the accident happened during “survivalist manoeuvres” – a version lent some credence because his wife, Jackie, was not informed until a week later.

The timing is interesting: Griffin had just left the extremist National Front (NF) after an ideological spat and was living in France, where he had cashed in on the 1980s property boom after buying houses in Shropshire. Leading a disgruntled breakaway faction of the NF, he founded a new movement with one of the most notorious fascists in Europe.

Griffin’s collaborator, Roberto Fiore, was wanted by police in Italy after the 1980 bombing of Bologna railway station, which left 85 people dead and 200 wounded. Fiore, leader of the far-right organisation Terza Posizione, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in his absence and had spent much of the decade lying low in Britain. In 1986 he and Griffin set up a lucrative business, later renamed Easy London, helping young students and workers to find accommodation and work in London. The profits went to fascist groups.

The new political movement conceived by Griffin and Fiore had the arresting title of the International Third Position, with a racist agenda aimed at Jews, blacks and immigrants. Bizarrely, Griffin’s anti-Israel stance led him to make a fundraising trip to Libya at Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s expense in 1988 (a few weeks before the Lockerbie bombing) and to laud Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, both of whom also shared Griffin’s antipathy to world capitalism, homosexuality and women’s rights.

Griffin’s professed sympathy with Islam’s values was at odds with his subsequent denunciation of the religion as “a wicked and vicious faith”, for which he was tried for inciting racial hatred in 2006 and found not guilty. His pragmatic U-turn allowed him to exploit public fears by claiming in the recent European election that Asian Muslims were sexually grooming white girls.

At any event, the loss of his eye changed his fortunes. The accident, he said, “knocked me out for a full year so I couldn’t finish the renovation work, interest rates went sky-high and I lost the whole lot”. He was declared bankrupt, owing £65,000, and dropped out of politics for a while.

These days he lives at an isolated stone farmhouse in the Welsh hills, about 10 miles from Welshpool. The two-acre property is guarded by security cameras, burglar alarms and two rottweilers named – with gloating insensitivity – Anne and Frank, after one of the most renowned Jewish victims of Nazi Germany.

Visiting members of the media, whom he amiably calls “lying scum”, tend to allow that Griffin is affable, funny and well read, as befits a Cambridge graduate. Only when fervour gets the better of him does spittle fleck his sharp suits and fashionable ties. His physical presence is unimpressive: of medium height, with a slight paunch accentuated by his bullet-proof jacket, he has dark brush-like hair and small, fleshy features.

According to his jovial wife, he has “never done a proper job” apart from renovating houses, chopping down trees and teaching foreign students English. “I’ve been the one who has actually gone out every day, working to keep us going financially,” said Jackie. “He’s spent his time playing at stupid politics. To Nick, it’s all a game.”

Jackie, a nurse who met Griffin while visiting her sister at Cambridge, may sometimes “hate the thought of being talked about as the wife of the BNP leader”, but by all accounts it is a happy marriage. She acts as Griffin’s assistant and a BNP administrator. They have four children, Jennifer, 23, Richard, 20, Rhiannon, 19, and Elen, 15, all Welsh speakers.

Griffin is now characterised as the most dangerous political figure since Sir Oswald Mosley led the British Union of Fascists. However, the BNP’s support was lower than at the previous European election and its victories this time are attributed in part to the collapse of the Labour vote. Griffin’s limited success has been to rebrand the party, muting its blatantly racist ideology – “Adolf went a bit too far” – and making the BNP “user-friendly” by tapping into the fears of the white working class about Islamic fundamentalism, immigration and jobs.

Griffin’s beliefs were instilled at an early age. His parents, Edwin and Jean, had met as Young Conservatives while heckling a Communist party meeting. Edwin, while serving in the RAF in India, had witnessed inter-racial violence during Partition, and returned home opposed to multiculturalism and immigration. He ran an electrical contracting business in Barnet, north London, where Griffin was born in 1959, but the business failed and the family moved to Suffolk.

Aged five, Griffin pedalled his tricycle up and down his street to campaign for Reginald Maudling, the Conservative candidate. After attending Woodbridge school in Suffolk, he won a sixth-form scholarship, becoming one of only two boys in the girls’ public school of Saint Felix, Southwold. According to Dominic Carman, his biographer, he was known as “Nick the Prick”, who told the school librarian: “I’m not an extremist; I’m a socialist – a national socialist.”

In 1974 Edwin, by now a Conservative councillor, was so dismayed by Britain’s leftward drift that he took his family to a National Front meeting in Norwich. Griffin, who had read Mein Kampf by the age of 13 and whose favourite game was “counting black people on the streets from the car window when my parents drove through London”, joined up soon afterwards.

The guest speaker that day was Martin Webster, the National Front’s activities organiser. Webster, who was openly gay despite the party’s homophobic stance, claimed Griffin turned up on his doorstep the following year and they began a two-year affair.

Griffin strongly denied the allegation, saying he couldn’t sue because no court would put any value on his reputation. “I did stay at his flat when I was 16, not knowing he was a poof,” he said. “I found out he was a poof because he tried it on, and I said, ‘No, thank you’.”

At Cambridge, where he studied history and law at Downing College, Griffin founded the Young National Front Students. A waiflike 8st loner, he was beaten up after an NF meeting and decided to learn to box. He became a boxing blue but graduated with a second-class degree, after which he spent a year on the dole. He began working for the NF, rising to its governing body and launching the magazine Nationalism Today.

After Griffin’s “accident” his parents saved him from financial ruin by selling their house. For a while he was a security man at the meetings of David Irving, the Holocaust-denying historian – “I looked quite good in a black leather jacket and an eye patch”. Griffin later reproached Irving for conceding that 4m Jews may have been killed by the Nazis.

In 1995 Griffin relaunched his political career when John Tyndall, an avowed Nazi who had founded the BNP in 1982, invited him to join the party. Griffin claimed he fell out with Tyndall over the latter’s policy on Muslims: “Because he hated Jews so much, he thought Muslims couldn’t be all that bad if they didn’t like Jews.” With majority support in the party, Griffin became BNP leader in 1999, ousting Tyndall in a bloodless coup.

He embarked on making the BNP electable, concealing his own extremism. He depicted party members as “politically incorrect rebels” rather than a bunch of skinheads; indeed, bomber jackets gave way to suits. The watchword was “normality”. He declared: “We are the first glimmer of resistance from the British people against being turned into a minority in our own homeland.”

In a moment of candour, he admitted that the BNP’s hope lay in public despair: “The worse the mess, then the more one rubs one’s hands with glee.” In another unguarded lapse, he told a journalist: “Basically, it’s race hatred, isn’t it?” He dreams of an old England, when “serfdom had given way to huge numbers of people owning their own plot of land and having access to the village commons”. If Griffin’s BNP has a future, it will always be looking back to the past.

UKIP or the Tories come nowhere near that. A holocaust denier who calls his guard dogs 'Anne' and 'Frank'? He's a bigoted arsehole.

[Dan]

You are failing to consider your first post. If the base that joined the BNP did not share its racist platform, then they could have formed their party and still have almost a good a chance as if they had joined the BNP, or they could have taken control of the BNP and redirect its policy beyond just dropping antisemitism.

True enough.

UKIP or the Tories come nowhere near that. A holocaust denier who calls his guard dogs 'Anne' and 'Frank'? He's a bigoted arsehole.

He does seem like a jackass, he's not even a good fascist; at least a fascist would work instead of having his wife support him. I didn't know much about the guy, but if the BNP is so much worse then the Tories or UKIP, then it would help if those parties weren't called racist or extremist as well, as that muddies the water for people whose knowledge of British politics is limited (like me, another foreigner, or the average working class person).

I've always assumed the racist charge against the BNP was the same as when idiots cry racist at the Republicans or the (former) Canadian Reform Party or Conservative Party, that it was just a smear tactic of the left. My assumption seems to have been wrong.

[DishonestPolitics]

My guess is that the quote was taken out of context from some party member and likely doesn't reflect the party's position.

Anyways, people vote for the BNP for the same reason they vote for rightist parties all over Europe; resentment of immigration.

I totally disagree with this. Seeing as the BNP got two seats recently. Why?
I think it's more to do with the dishonesty of the Politicians. It was a vote to send a message to Parliament, imho. Vote radical, for radical change.

The immigration problem, if you can call it that, is not the main reason for the large increase in the percentage in the number of votes the BNP received. If it was, why have we not seen the BNP gain support when immigration was really in the spotlight in our country? Why now, right when the expenses scandal is the thing in the spotlight!

[Spotacus]

He does seem like a jackass, he's not even a good fascist; at least a fascist would work instead of having his wife support him. I didn't know much about the guy, but if the BNP is so much worse then the Tories or UKIP, then it would help if those parties weren't called racist or extremist as well, as that muddies the water for people whose knowledge of British politics is limited (like me, another foreigner, or the average working class person).

I've always assumed the racist charge against the BNP was the same as when idiots cry racist at the Republicans or the (former) Canadian Reform Party or Conservative Party, that it was just a smear tactic of the left. My assumption seems to have been wrong.

Good post, As you found out The BNP are beyond the pale for a reason, Nick Griffin is certainly not the British Ron Paul. However I just have to say;

I don't believe it! someone changed there mind about something on the internet!

[Dave]

Let's stop beating around the bush here. The BNP is a party for people who want to keep Britain white and aren't afraid to say it. In fact, their stated policy is to reserve Britain for its indigenous people and deport (albeit through voluntary and not compulsory means) alien groups--even white ones like the Poles although when push comes to shove I'm sure they'd focus their fire on Muslims, Jamaicans, etc. first.

Those who support the BNP should stop trying to dance around the issue and just say they want to keep Britain white, period. There's nothing wrong with vocalizing this belief and instead of apologizing for your "racism" go on the attack and accuse BNP haters of disloyalty and defeatism. Meet the charge of bigotry with the riposte of treason.

The BNP is of course full of unhinged loons and Griffin himself, though mostly professional, is a bit unsavory (Holocaust denial ). When push comes to shove this really doesn't matter, naturally a party outside mainstream respectability attracts, to put it generously, "characters". Effete multicultural values--values that betray your people--are the path to respectability and power for the time being. A century ago someone voicing such values would've been laughed out of Britain or perhaps even imprisoned for sedition.

[Decky]

Let's stop beating around the bush here. The BNP is a party for people who want to keep Britain white and aren't afraid to say it.

But it is impossible even if you are a massive racist these people were born in Britain, they are British, you can no send someone back if they were born here and have nowhere to go back to. Being British had nothing to with your skin colour but everything to with where you were born, nationality is just a piece of paper saying you were born here ergo you are a citizen of that place.

[Dave]

You're confusing nationality with state identity, but yes Britain does have a doctrine of perpetual allegiance. However, that's no real barrier. Long Shanks sent the Jews packing after all, and the BNP doesn't even propose compulsory repatriation. Their stated policy (regardless of what their real policy may be ) is to eliminate most immigration, particularly non-white, and offer paid repatriation to non-British ethnic groups within Britain. The former has been achieved in Denmark (despite remaining in the EU), and the latter has previously been half-heartedly implemented in France and Germany to deal with the legacy of guest workers. There's nothing particularly remarkable about either scheme.

[DanDaMan]

Anyways, people vote for the BNP for the same reason they vote for rightist parties all over Europe; resentment of immigration.

Whats wrong with stopping immigration?
Is it not common sense to stop more people from entering your home when they start to detract from your own ability to take care of your own?

Is it not common sense to limit others from gaining the ability to take your home from your own children?

[Douglas]

Is it not common sense to stop more people from entering your home when they start to detract from your own ability to take care of your own?

But they don't, immigrants in fact earn more on average and pay more tax on average than the native Brit. I'm guessing you didn't know that.

[DanDaMan]

Is it not common sense to stop more people from entering your home when they start to detract from your own ability to take care of your own?

But they don't, immigrants in fact earn more on average and pay more tax on average than the native Brit. I'm guessing you didn't know that.

So all that stuff on the news about Britain about to go bankrupt is bullshit then!!!



End sarcasm and now start laughing my arse off!

[Douglas]

So all that stuff on the news about Britain about to go bankrupt is bullshit then!!!

No it's just that you can't attribute that fact to the immigrants, they if anything are slowing the process down. Be bloody grateful.